Strange Rumblings From The Big Apple, Pt 1

Yestarday I finally got around to watching a classic, Panic In Needle Park with Al Pacino.
No, I didn't watch it with Al Pacino (though that would have been kind of cool. I could lie and say, yeah, I did watch it with Al Pacino and we shared adult beverages and nachos and then played Star Wars Trivia Pursuit and laughed and laughed and laughed. But I won't.)
Its an early Pacino film, as far as I can tell his first starring role. According to IMDB this is the film that Coppola showed the brass at Paramount in order to convince them to hire Pacino for The Godfather.

The film revolves around Bobby (Pacino) and Helen (Kitty Winn - she played Sharon the hottie in The Exorcist) who are young and in love and living in Manhattan. They just happen to live in Needle Park and are a couple of beautiful junkies and hustlers and theives and exist in one of the lower circles of hell.
The movie has a gritty, real look to it. A no-budget, hand-held camera kinda shaky thing going on at times. There are moments when the film has a real documentary feel to it, with in-your-face examinations of the rituals involved in shooting street-grade heroin. The fingers tapping the envelope, coaxing the powder into a bottle cap. Lighting a couple of matches and holding them just right to cook. The syringe lovingly filling up. The careful insertion into the vein (more tapping). Slowly pushing the plunger. The near-orgasmic extasy of the junkie when the poison hits the brain.
Trainspotting, this is not. No MTV-generation edits here, folks. Sometimes, its one fluid shot (no pun intended, maybe) from smack in bottle cap to orgasm. Which does tend to support the myth that the film-makers did employee some real junkies...

If you ever see this film (he says, hoping someone actually reads this blog-thing), watch the folks in the background in the street scenes. I honestly believe that this was filmed, at times, sans permits. Guys stop and watch Kitty Winn's legs as she walks by them. People passing by seemed confused when they overhear the conversations between actors. Very cool. Don't get a lot of that these days.
And pay attention to the faces in the film. There are some very familiar, but very young, ones here and there. Paul Sorvino as a john, Raul Julia as Helen's lover when she first meets Bobby.
And the camera work. Oh, boy, the camera work. Jerry Schatzberg really shines. There is one scene in a coffee shop, where Bobby runs out to grab his brother Hank (a B & E artist who dresses like a banker). The shot follows Pacino out of the coffee shop to get Hank and then back to his table without breaking or the camera leaving its spot near the counter. And on the way out, Pacino runs straight into a bus boy which sends a tray of cups and plates flying, which has the feel of a real accident. Pacino's line (an ad-lib?) sends Kitty Winn into a fit of laughter.

One thing I gotta say that I truly loved about this film is that everyone, I mean everyone, is a user. From the thieves and hustlers and junkies to the cops. No cop with a heart of gold in this movie. He wants to make a bust and he's going to use the pretty girl to do it. I loved that.
In a remake, the handsome cop would want to save the girl, take her away from this world and make her his all his. Of course, in a remake the addicts would all share some huge loft with hip posters and hip furniture and hip music. Panic In Needle Park has no wallpaper. Very little furniture. The characters share a park bench where they drool and twitch. And, praise Jesus, there is no music in this movie, anywhere. None. Not one iota. Zero. Zip. Do not go looking for the soundtrack people, there ain't one.
So, to sum up... Panic In Needle Park is an early-seventies movie that has plenty of close-ups of needles breaking skin, lots of dialogue, very little action, a lot of stuff going on off-screen (and we're expected to use our brains to figure out), and no music.
Cannot recommend it enough.

So why are you still here? Find it, rent it, love it. Panic In Needle Park. This ain't your parents junkie film (actually - it is, funny, eh?).

If you staggered into here expecting to find pictures of unclothed ladies flinging pooh, I apologize. I'm not from around here. Maybe try later...